Long Road To Ruin
by EternalCorruption
Summary: Harry rushes to the site of a magical phenomena only to find the last thing on earth he ever expected to see. Have the dead really come back to life, or is his mind playing tricks on him. HP/HG
1. Long Road to Ruin

b**Author's Note:** This is the first fanfic that I've written in quite a while, and to be completely honest, I don't have a lot of time to put into this. I am posting this as a tester, and by your feedback, will continue to write. I'm also looking for someone to possibly help me write this, or to edit and add some ideas in. If you're interested, please e-mail me () or through . Thank you.

**Long Road To Ruin**

A misty green haze coiled itself around the battle ruined village of Hogsmeade, drifting lazily but purposefully from the center of the Forbidden Forest, close to Hogwarts Castle. It snaked its way around, casting an eerie glow throughout. The sky above darkened, and growled unsteadily, hungry for a heavy, solid rain. The fog thickened and constricted around the village, blocking any visible way in or out, creating an impregnable wall around the village.

It seemed as though the fog had a mind of it's own.

A streak of lightning snapped across the sky, illuminating the ghostly green glow; thunder roared and growled, and the clouds let loose a heavy onslaught of rain. Ever so faintly, a voice travelled on the wind.

"…My magic….my magic is broken…" The sharp, hissing words were muffled and hidden beneath the cloak of fog and roars of thunder.

"My magic…"

The thunder turned into a loud, deafening moan. The heavy voiced carried over the fog and rang, unhindered, over the village and Hogwarts.

"…Is broken…"

A violent streak of lightning illuminated the treetops fo the forbidden Forest and turned into a magnificent serpent green color. It gathered up the fog from the Forbidden Forest and clung to it, situated unnaturally and oddly in the sky, unwilling to hide itself back into the clouds. The fog coiled itself around the lightning and turned on itself, spinning sickeningly in the sky like a large glowing green top.

The sky groaned and howled, with wind picking up and swarming, twisting, swirling around the lightning and fog. It turned and turned, blurring in the sky. More lightning struck it, making it glow ever brighter. How many people were seeing this? There was no moon, the sky was dark, and Hogsmeade was nearly empty.

From the mixture formed bodies; ghostly figures in the misty lightning light. A hand, an arm; torsos and heads and legs.. Body and figure after figure formed from the magical mist, strangely piecing themselves together.

Faces and hair sprouted on the ghostly human heads, and torsos took on the anatomical shapes of woman and man. The bodies were limp, almost boneless and malleable.

Faster and faster the mist spun, and more and more lightning sparked from the sky. It struck life into the bodies, and they gasped for breath as they were slowly lowered by the wind to the ground.

"My magic…" the voice hissed, "…is broken…"

A young man with blue eyes and untidy black hair touched the ground of the Forbidden Forest first. The lightning disappeared and the fog, as quickly as it had come, coiled back onto itself and vanished. The strange green glow remained.

"Mmm…" His voice failed him, unused for years. He looked around, squinting. No light met his eyes. The wood around him was pitch black, darkened from the absence of the moon, or the lightning that had simply disappeared.

"…What the hell is goin' on out here? I thought this was all over. What's this green light?"

An older man's voice carried from the edge of the Forest. He was frail, and yet, unafraid, and lived nearby in a tiny cottage. He didn't dare walk into the wood. "Is someone out there?" he shouted. "Hello?"

"H…hello?"

The skinny, untidy dark haired man forced the words out with great difficulty. His voice was raspy, and came thickly from his throat. He coughed and spoke again. This time, he was little louder. "Hello?"

"What the blazin' hell?" The old man pointed his wand into the Forest, towards where the voice had come. "Who are you, and what the hell do you want? You ain't one of them damn Death Eaters or Centaurs or somethin' are ya?"

"I…I don't know." The dark-haired man in the forest took a step forward, tripped over something and stumbled. He fell to the ground unceremoniously and scraped up his naked knee. He reached around for some way to get up and grabbed a thin, wooden stick. A warm, friendly feeling filled him and words he didn't quite understand came to his lips. "Lumos!"

A bright beam of light blasted from the end of the thin wooden stick, a wand, and shone on the other bodies that were born from the mist. Person after person, naked and confused, stood before him. Many faces looked somewhat familiar, though he didn't quite know, or understand, why. They blinked heavily and turned their eyes away from the light. They were all shivering from the coolness of the night, wrapping their arms around themselves for warmth.

"I see your light so I know you ain't no evil Centaur. I'm gonna ask you again before I send an owl to Harry Potter and have him come out here and – "

Something in the name "Harry Potter" struck a chord in the naked, dark haired man in the forbidden forest. He didn't know where he was, what this place was, who these other naked people around him were or why they were all there. But the wand… the name Harry Potter… some of the faces around him.. they were all so familiar, but the answers seemed to be so far away, floating beyond him. The old man at the edge of the wood only added to his confusion.

"Ain't you gonna come on outta there? If you was a You-Know-Who follower I think you'da tried to kill me by now, I think. And what was you sayin' about your magic bein' broken? If that's your wand in there, it looks like it's workin' okay to me. You listenin in there?"

The old wizard received no answer. The dark haired man in the forest did not know how to speak the words that he did not know how to say.

"Alright… I'm writin to Harry Potter, then. This ain't gonna work."

He shuffled away, relying heavily on the use of an old, knotty cane. He stood short and stooped and moved slowly but sure and with known intent. 40 yards down a knobbly, cobbled pathway, past a pile of rubble and debri, he reached the substantial little cottage in which he lived. The old wizard managed himself inside and to the old slight desk hidden away in a corner of the living room. It was a small but cozy room with warm, worn furniture. Pictures hanging on the walls showed a younger man with a beautiful dark-haired woman, small children, and even a lively goat. They were free of dust, even though the room was thick with clutter.

He sat at the desk for a moment and quickly quilled out a letter, rolled it up and addressed it to Harry Potter, Hogwarts Castle. Then he attached it to the leg of a large, plain brown barn owl that had flown from a cage in the opposite corner of the room and threw it up and out of the window.

The old wizard used his wand to lock the door and sat down on the plaid davenport, waiting. After what felt like an eternity, something appeared on the narrow cobbled path before his house, blocking the short distance to the forbidden forest. As quickly as he could, the old man popped off of the sofa and shuffled out of the house (which he locked behind him,) and meandered towards the two figures holding broomsticks on the pathway.

"Harry Potter?" he asked, stepping closer.

"Yeah, I received your letter. Thanks. What's going on?"

Harry lit his wand and the old wizard could finally see his face. Harry had dark shadows beneath his eyes and a thick stubble that covered his face in patches. He looked far older than his 19 years. Beside him stood Hermione Granger, as bushy haired and worrisome looking as ever. They both had on black Hogwarts robes and were holding broomsticks. Hermione's face was a very uncomplimenting shade of green.

"Is what what you're talking about?" Hermione pointed towards the dim light from the forbidden forest. "Are you sure you actually heard them speak?"

"I sure did," the old man answered. "There was some weird lightning in the sky and a green mist like it come from the breath of You-Know-Who himself."

"But Voldemort's dead," Hermione said, looking confused. "Green mist… lightning. It was probably just a magic storm."

The old man nearly bounced around her in his agitation. "There was also some moanin' and 'My magic is broken!' I called out into the woods an' someone answered me back!"

"There's someone actually in the forbidden forest? Nobody's been out there since the war ended." Harry looked concerned. "I'm going in."

"Harry… think about this first. We should get McGonagall, or Kingsley if it's something sinister… which it sounds like it might be."

"I can handle it, Hermione. Thanks for your concern, though."

Harry walked forward and stepped around oddly grown branches, entering the dark thicket of the forbidden forest. His wand rested in his hand, but he held onto it with purpose in front of him, illuminating the rough path before him. He followed the erratically moving wandlight of the stranger. Harry's insides squirmed uncomfortably and his chest constricted tightly. Voldemort couldn't be back again – they had made sure of it. All of the Horcruxes were destroyed, there was no denying that. But where else would green fog come from? And a 'magic storm?' Harry had never heard of those before.

He stumbled over a fallen tree branch but caught himself, continuing through the forest. There were no more giant spiders in the forbidden forest, having been destroyed by both sides in the war. The centaurs and unicorns remained, and so did various other creatures. Grawp no longer had to make his home in the wood and had been accepted into Wizarding society. So harry wasn't really nervous to walk into the forbidden forest, but some dark magic remained hidden there somewhere. Nobody, except the Centaurs and other magical creatures had set food in the forest since Voldemort was defeated by Harry.

While Hogwarts had been repaired, a good portion of Hogsmeade remained in rubble and ruin, so it didn't surprise Harry that only one person noticed the recent odd occurrence. It was two years past the war with Voldemort, and Hogsmeade desperately needed repairs, and the staff at Hogwarts decided it was high time to get the village repaired. So much had happened through the years, things were so different. But for now, Harry focused on the task at hand.

He entered a small clearing close to the source of the wandlight. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He hesitated, then set forward towards the foreign wandlight.

As he pushed aside a thickly gloved, overgrown bush and entered the area where the wandlight was, the breath was knocked from his chest and lungs. He wasn't staring at something truthful. Someone was playing a sick, cruel, thoughtless joke.

The dark-haired, pale and skinny man holding the lit wand looked up and Harry, and he felt as though someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over his head, or as though he had plunged into the middle of the black lake in the dead of winter. It was as if he were staring into a mirror – one that had changed his eye color, or made him naked.

"Harry?"

"…Dad?"

It wasn't until he peeled his eyes away that he noticed the others, also naked and thin, a hundred or more, standing around and near them. He shined his wand over the people until he saw a flash of red. Harry dropped his wand as though it were molted lava in his hand.

"…Mum? What's going on?"

Harry Potter, no longer of number 4, Privet Drive, new Defense against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, defeater of Voldemort, was completely and utterly failed for words. His world had gone black, and it wasn't simply because his wand had fallen to the forest floor.

"This can't be real!"

He picked up his wand and shined it on the naked James Potter. The other naked, long dead witches and wizards began to move towards the light, all looking dazed and confused.


	2. From Yesterday

**Long Road To Ruin****  
"From Yesterday"**

Confused, Harry found himself disapparating from the small wooded clearing in the forbidden forest, and apparating back towards the small cottage where the little old wizard and Hermione were. His face was paler than pale, looking as though he'd just seen a ghost.

"What is it?" Hermione was bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Do we need to contact Professor McGonagall? Who is it? Harry, are you alright? You look like you just saw the dead."

Harry was grasping his chest and breathing heavily. "I don't think it was a ghost, Hermione."

The little old wizard frowned at the two of them. "Well! Ain't you gonna do nothin'? If it's You-Know-Who or what have you, I don' want no part of it! You better get back in there and take care of it, Harry Potter, if you 'da had any decency!"

"I don't know if this is something you can just 'take care of,' sir." His brow was beaded with sweat. "This… this can't be real at all." Hermione grabbed his arm, and he quickly used side-along apparation to take them back to the clearing.

Hermione screamed as they set foot back on land, holding her wand close to her heart and tightly in her hand. Her wandlight shone on the figures before her, still dazed and naked. "Harry! What…? Oh no, oh no." She moved to stand behind Harry as James Potter walked towards them. "HARRY! That's… that's not your father, is it?"

Instinct took hold of Hermione, and she grabbed Harry's arm and quickly disapparated out of the clearing and back to the old wizard and his wizened cottage. They swiftly grabbed their broomsticks, placed them between their legs, and kicked off, setting off towards Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Neither could speak – words were failing them both. How could the dead be back? They didn't look like Inferi, and one of them had spoken to the old wizard, answering back vaguely to his intense questioning. Harry didn't understand what was going on. He'd never experienced something as serious, as mind boggling. Dumbledore had once told him that in truth, the dead could not come back to life. Dumbledore had been wrong before, though… hadn't he? Harry's palms were sweating, and he found it difficult to hold onto his broomstick. So many things were swimming through his head.

For the first time in 18 years, he, Harry, had been able to look into his father's eyes… and this time, they were real and staring back at him. For the first time in 18 years, James Potter was back on this earth – though how he got there was a complete mystery. And there were other faces there, other people. Lily Potter was there. Vaguely, some of the other faces looked familiar, but Harry had barely noticed any of them. He was focused mainly on the two faces that he had waited nearly two decades to see.

Hermione, for all of her fear of flying, was speeding through the sky like a maniac. Her hair whipped around her, and Harry was unsure of how she could actually see around her. They sped towards Hogwarts and after what felt like a lifetime, touched ground in front of the main doorway leading into the castle. They ran up the stone stairs and towards Headmaster McGonagall's office. Harry shouted the password at the Phoenix guarding the passageway into her study, and they dashed up the spiral stairs together, taking the steps two, three at a time.

Together they pounded on her study door and an angry voice yelled back at them, telling them to come in. They stepped into the study, not so different from when it had belonged to Snape, and Dumbledore before him. The Headmaster's portraits lined the study walls, and the eerie silvery glow of Dumbledore's stone pensive shone from behind cabinet doors. Her desk had silver framed photographs on it, animated and lively with people that Harry had never seen before. It was odd, thinking that Professors had lives outside of Hogwarts, even now that he was a Professor himself.

Her hair was pulled back in its usual tartan bun, lined now with more silver than before. Her glasses were perched precariously on her nose, threatening to fall off after she turned her head sharply to see who had so rudely knocked on her office door.

"Potter? Granger? What is going on?"

"Professor… You need to come with us. To the Forbidden Forest. I don't know what's happened, what it is, if I'm just seeing things, but you need to come and confirm this for me." Harry was out of breath and annoyed at his surprise.

"We received a letter from a wizard in Hogsmeade about something strange – mist, a voice, light in the Forbidden Forest. Harry went into the wood and… I don't know, Professor. We saw… James. Lily. Alive again. And others! All people that've died –"

Professor McGonagall's lips thinned and her eyes widened. "You know very well that the dead cannot come back to life. This is ridiculous! I've had my hands filled with the Collins twins and I could use a little bit of rest and –"

"Minerva!" Professor McGonagall stopped speaking midsentence and stared at Harry. He never called her by her first name. "You need to come with us." He stepped over to the fireplace, threw in a pinch of Floo Powder, and set off for the old wizard's cottage near the edge of the Forbidden Forest. McGonagall and Hermione were close behind.

They entered the clearing in the forest and McGonagall screeched. The normal rosy color in her cheeks had faded, and her face was as pale as a Hogwarts pillowcase. The naked figures that Harry and Hermione had first run across were sitting on the forest floor, huddled around one another for warmth. The red hair of Lily Potter was easily visible through the crowd. Many of the naked people had wands in their hands.

Where had they come from?

"You see?! This is real… but how? Right there! That's my mother. And she's been dead for 18 years, but there she is, flesh and blood, right in front of us."

"Cedric Diggory? Gideon Prewett? James, Lily? Mad-Eye?"


End file.
